Page 35 of When the Rogue Returns
Victor’s breath came in hard, short bursts. “You’re saying that you never left me.”
“Yes. Until this moment, I assumed that you’d leftme.”
“I don’t... understand,” he said in a guttural voice. “How could she...Whywould she—”
“Destroy us? Separate us?” A vise tightened around Isa’s chest. “To get what she wanted. Or rather, what Gerhart wanted.”
Awareness dawned in his face, turning his features to granite. “The royal diamonds.”
With a nod, she sank back onto the settee, the note in her hand. “They told me you were gone. They said you took the earrings from the parure in exchange for helping them get into the strongbox; that you wanted us to travel separately to thwart whomever might come after us. They claimed that you planned to meet us in Paris.” She lifted her gaze to him. “But you never came.”
“I never came because I never knew where you’d gone,” he ground out. “And I damned well never helped them get into the bloody strongbox!”
He seemed genuinely outraged. But there was one detail he hadn’t explained. “So how did Gerhart and Jacoba get the jewels?” She searched his face. “Answer me that.”
“I can’t. When I left the shop to check on you, Jacoba stayed behind. I wasn’t worried about that because the cases and the strongbox were all locked up. They were still locked when I returned. If she stole the diamonds while I was gone, I don’t know how.”
He glanced away. “I eventually came to think that you must have switched the jewels out while at work. I had no other explanation for it. Your ‘abandonment’ of me seemed to be tied to the theft of the jewels.”
“I would never have stolen anything!” she protested.
His gaze shot to her. “But you might have made a false key frommykeys and given it to your family.”
“Right. Because I was such a master criminal at eighteen,” she said bitterly.
“Someonefashioned those imitation diamonds,” he pointed out. “Neither Jacoba nor Gerhart had the ability. Are you trying to tell me you had nothing to do with that, either?”
She stared down at her hands. The only way to get through this was to unravel the past—and that meant telling the truth. Or as much of it as she dared.
“I think it’s time you tell me what really happened that night,” he said in a cold voice. “Because you and I clearly have very different versions of it.”
8
VICTOR PACED BEFOREthe settee, his thoughts racing. Isa hadn’t written the note. She hadn’t left him. Or so she said. And it was hard not to believe her, when she looked as stunned as he felt.
He stiffened. It could still be all an act. She could still be trying to rewrite the past so he wouldn’t take vengeance on her. Therehadbeen a theft, after all, and clearly she’d had something to do with it.
But she’d also been very forthcoming so far. If she was trying to allay his suspicions, wouldn’t she just pretend not to know anything about the theft?
Her eyes looked tormented as she met his gaze. “Before I tell you what happened, I need to clarify one thing. Are you saying you had absolutely nothing to do with the theft of those diamonds?”
He drew himself up stiffly. “Until the fakes were discovered, a week after the parure was taken to the palace, I didn’t even know there hadbeena theft.”
She gaped at him. “The imitations were discovered that soon? But I never saw anything in the papers about it—”
“You were in Paris, remember?” he growled. “You were already living off the spoils.”
When she flinched, he muttered a curse, then strode to the fireplace and back, trying to calm himself. He would get nowhere if he didn’t control his feelings. If he reacted emotionally, it would be too easy for her to slip something past him. He had to behave as an investigator. He had to interrogate her with logic and reason.
Though that would be a great deal easier if he weren’t interrogating the only woman who turned all his logic and reason into pudding.
He frowned as he came to a halt in front of her. Not this time, damn it.
“It wasn’t in the papers,” he said tersely. “The royal family didn’t want to look like fools, and the jeweler didn’t want his reputation damaged. Since no one could be sure whether the jewels had been switched at the palace or at the jeweler’s, they didn’t want to reveal the theft publicly until they found the thieves. Which they never did. Without any evidence, they couldn’t even prosecute anyone.”
“So they never knew it was my family?” she said incredulously.
“Not for certain. At first,Iwasn’t even sure.” His voice hardened. “I thought my wife had deserted me, because she was afraid that I would lose my post and she’d end up having to take care of me.”
